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Desktop apps make their way into the Windows Store

Traditional desktop Windows
applications can now be distributed and sold through the Windows Store,
with note-taking application Evernote being one of the first to use this
new capability.

Until now, applications built for and sold through the Windows Store in Windows 10 have been built for the Universal Windows Platform
(UWP), the common set of APIs that spans Windows 10 across all the many
devices it supports. This has left one major category of application,
the traditional desktop application built using the Win32 API, behind.

Announced at Build 2015, codename Project
Centennial—now officially titled the Desktop App Converter—is
Microsoft's solution to this problem. It allows developers to repackage
existing Win32 applications with few or no changes and sell them through
the store. Applications packaged this way aren't subject to all the
sandbox restrictions that UWP applications are, ensuring that most will
work unmodified. But they are also given the same kind of clean
installation, upgrading, and uninstallation that we've all come to
expect from Store-delivered software.

Centennial is designed to provide not just a
way of bringing Win32 apps into the store; it also provides a transition
path so that developers can add UWP-based functionality to their old
applications on a piecemeal basis. Evernote, one of the launch
applications, uses UWP APIs to include support for Live Tiles and
Windows' notification system. In this way, developers can create
applications that work better on Windows 10 but without having to
rewrite them entirely for Windows 10.

The big downside to Centennial applications
is, of course, that they're not universal. They'll only run on desktop
Windows systems with x86 processors. What this means for UWP going
forward isn't clear. On the one hand, it means that developing a UWP for
Windows' primary audience, the desktop, is now unnecessary. UWPs still
have a role if a developer really wants to reach Mobile, HoloLens, the
Internet of Things, or Xbox, but if those are unimportant, there is now
little need to create a full UWP app. On the other hand, by allowing
developers to incrementally add support for UWP rather than forcing them
to build an entirely new program from scratch, UWP as an end goal
becomes a great deal more attainable. Devs can add support at their own
pace, focusing on the UWP features that offer most value (such as
notifications or Cortana integration) before building out more complete
support.

Simultaneous with this, the Desktop App
Converter has itself been published to the Store as a Store app. Direct
support for the App Converter is also being included in commonly used
third-party installation products such as InstallShield and WiX, to
streamline the process of turning a desktop app into a Store one.

Desktop apps make their way into the Windows Store
Reviewed by G Geezgos
on
September 14, 2016
Rating: 5